


between the bullet & the blade

by gsparkle



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Gen, Natasha Romanov Joins SHIELD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-09-15 20:19:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9254909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gsparkle/pseuds/gsparkle
Summary: Natasha Romanoff joins SHIELD, learns how to be a person, and occasionally kicks ass.(A series of short fics that begin with Natasha joining SHIELD. Updates sporadically, but there's never a cliffhanger, promise!)





	1. the floor of heaven

**Author's Note:**

> I collected a bunch of prompts that didn't really fit anywhere else, so I decided to make a series out of them! I'm hoping to explore not just Natasha's relationship with Clint, but also where she fits in at SHIELD and all her new experiences in this world. I have a few more chapters in the hole, but I'd love to receive prompts if you have any fun ideas or something you'd like to see!
> 
> Title of the series is from, of all things, [this dril tweet](https://twitter.com/dril/status/816655771035373570). Thanks to the **be_compromised** community for encouraging me to post this, and to **santiagoinbflat** for reading literally everything I ever write and still being my friend, anyway.  <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Prompt:** what does moonlight taste like?  
>  **Title:** Lorenzo, _The Merchant of Venice,_ V.i.66.

“Come with me,” he says, and she goes. It is her first night free of the holding cell, her first night in this spartan bunk, her first night with a shiny SHIELD badge tucked in her back pocket. “Aren’t you going to ask where we’re going?” he asks after she’s followed him fifty feet down the hall.

“No.” If he wanted to kill her, he would have already tried. If he wanted to kill her, she’d never have made it within SHIELD’s fortress walls in the first place. If he wanted to kill her, well--quite simply, he’d fail.

But any weapon he carries stays hidden, and he merely shakes his head, amusement curling his lips as if she’s said something funny. She wants to ask, but it’s 2 am; even hardened spies can get loopy in the middle of the night. She says nothing, just follows him through the labyrinth and wonders with idle, morbid curiosity if he is Daedelus or Ariadne, luring her in or leading her out. When he shoulders into a stairwell and begins to climb, she assumes the latter; the tension unbunches from her shoulders and neck. They ascend and ascend until they must be level with the clouds, until her knees are contemplating rebellion.

“Almost there,” he puffs, and she wonders why in the world he does all this if it just tires him out. Maybe she’ll ask later, when her questions no longer come off as reconnaissance, when her curiosity is no longer a knife hanging over every conversation. “I know you’re wondering,” he huffs, unnerving in his ability to pinpoint her thoughts, “what could be worth all this climbing?” He’s almost right, though the concept of _worth_ hasn’t crossed her mind in years. “The answer, my friend, is this.”

Behind him is a door and he wrenches it open, battling a swift gust of wind. He steps across the threshold and beckons, offering a hand she refuses to grab or even look at. They are on SHIELD’s highest roof, atop a tower that seems part lighthouse and part air traffic control. There are clouds obscuring the many levels below them, making it perfectly possible to imagine floating on air, devoid of weight. This high, the stars seem tangible, catchable, like a field of luminous dandelions pods. She has never been this close to the sky before, not like this. She has never once before reached up to touch the moon and nearly felt it nudge against her fingers.

She now understands some, but not all, of why they are here. It is evident why he comes here, why he bounds so eagerly up the hard metal stairs; it is not evident why she has been invited, or why he is smiling so victoriously when she turns to face him. While she watches, he folds his legs beneath him and sinks seamlessly to the rooftop. He pats the concrete next to him and it is clear that he will not speak until she follows his lead, ginger and suspicious, and tucks her knees up under her chin.

“There’s the water,” he points out, as if this is the question she wants to ask. The question had never occurred to her, as she still isn’t allowed to leave the facility and thus has not been told where precisely they are. If she wanted, she could scan the horizon, calculate the shoreline and triangulate her position; but there is the more intriguing question of how many colors are smudged into one sky, and of how many stars she can number within one blink, and of how many minutes--going on twenty-three now--she will have to wait for an explanation.

“Sometimes,” he says, squinting at the moon, “Sometimes I’m down there so long I forget that there’s a whole world out here. Sometimes I forget why I’m even doing this job.” He gestures widely, vaguely. “The air even tastes different up here, especially at night.” He sticks his tongue out, childlike. “Like cold. Like real. Like moonlight.”

She curls her own tongue in on itself, surprised to find that he’s right. The center of her mouth is cool, and this strangeness purses her lips, and he laughs when he looks over. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen you confused,” he elaborates, and refuses to be cowed by her ensuing scowl. “Just kidding. Listen, I just wanted to--I don’t know, really. I consider this place an escape? Or, um--”

“A safe haven,” she supplies. These are words she has never applied together like this; safety was temporary and havens were nonexistent. These are new words, plasticky and unfamiliar, freshly unpackaged for this new life.

He cracks a smile. “Yeah,” he says, reaching into his jacket pocket in exaggerated movements that she both hates and appreciates. “Exactly. Every SHIELD agent needs a haven, and since today is your first day, I figured I’d show you mine, let you share it if you want.”

The reach into his jacket has produced a flask, rubbed down silver with a sharp-eyed bird etched into the concave curve. He offers it to her, easy and natural, the same way he’s just offered to share his slice of peace in this hectic agency. This rooftop perch is beautiful, but too exposed for her to ever find it truly relaxing. Still, the selflessness is what presses on the rusty valves in her heart as she silently takes the flask and swigs before passing it back. “Thanks,” she says, adding with some difficulty, “Clint.”

She has never used his name before, preferring _Barton_ or _Agent_ or, most distantly, _You._ He grins. “Any time, Nat,” he says, the nickname ruining any pretense of solemnity. “And welcome to SHIELD.”


	2. heard it from a friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's no shortage of people lining up to tell Natasha how awful Clint Barton is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Title:** "Take It On The Run," REO Speedwagon

According to Melinda May, Clint Barton is “a complete eyeroll of a person.” She says this after wiping the floor with him during hand-to-hand, and Natasha has to admit that she sees what May means. Every other thing Clint does has her eyes rolling to the sky as if some sort of divine intervention is going to save her from his antics. He makes a point to prop his feet up on Coulson’s desk, taking so long to fold his arms behind his head that she knows it’s all for show. If she sees right through it, though, and if all Coulson does is methodically lift his shoes by the toes and extract them from his desktop, then what, exactly, is the point of this performance?

Incredibly, this is relatively low on her list of questions about Why He Is This Way. Why does he crumple dramatically on her desk when the break room coffee pot is empty? He  _ knows _ she doesn’t care. Why does he routinely take two slices of pie at lunch and carefully position one within her reach? One doesn’t squeeze into a catsuit like hers by eating pie, thanks, and he always ends up eating the second slice, resignation smearing across his face like blueberry filling. Why does he ignore the horrified looks of the other agents and offer to teach her to draw his bow? Doesn’t he know she could  _ kill _ him, that every single part of her is a mercenary in its own right, that she is the embodiment of the apocalyptic Horseman of War? Doesn’t he have any sense of  _ self preservation? _

“No,” says Melinda May when Natasha gasps these questions in between headlocks. “Like I said: human eyeroll.”

Natasha looks at him across the gym, where he’s just challenged the burliest trainee to punch him in the face. She looks back at May and can’t disagree.

\-----

According to Maria Hill, Clint Barton is “a fucking nuisance, and a dead man if his report isn’t in by end of day.” Her glare propels Natasha out of her office and over to Clint’s cubicle, where she recites Maria’s complaint verbatim.

“That Hill,” he laughs, unfazed. “I’d like to see her try.”

Natasha still doesn’t understand this bizarre organization where authority is ignored and threats are hollow. Every threat she’s ever received has come to bear in sharp and searing fruition, with bloody, icy clarity. The first time she saw Clint carelessly discard a banana peel on top of a high priority report, it took every ounce of willpower to hold back her squeak of distress. They’ve been partners for a month, so now it’s only her eye that twitches when there’s coffee ringing his badge number on form 153-A; still, she can’t manage to stop herself from staying up all night perfecting her analysis of STRIKE Beta’s last mission.

“Rumlow  _ does _ need that report for Beta’s trip to Naples tomorrow,” she reminds him, because responsibility (more specifically, fear of punishment) still hovers over her shoulder.

“Rumlow can eat a dick,” Clint announces, and it’s not that he’s  _ wrong, _ per se; but then he stands and says, “Let’s go do something more fun. You coming?” and he’s at the door with That Look in his eye.

Natasha’s report is already done, of course, sitting in a pristine manila folder on Maria Hill’s immaculate desk. She wants to be rebellious and uncaring of consequences; she wants to be the dangerously free-thinking capitalist the Red Room always warned her about. She wants to be too occupied with her choices to remember silly trivialities like deadlines. She is too hardwired into responsibility to ever reach this point, but--“Fine, but only for an hour. And I’m not bailing you out with Fury this time. You hear me, Barton?”

He does not hear her, because he’s already streaking down the hall towards the cafeteria, plotting the sudden and unfortunate introduction of tapioca pudding and the insides of Rumlow’s desk drawers. Natasha begrudgingly accepts the role of watchguard and reserve pudding holder, and is taking her job somewhat seriously when a splat of tapioca lands on her back. When she turns, slow, deadly, he is smirking, a smug asshole, a  _ fucking nuisance. _

“I’m going to kill you,” she swears, and it’s the first time she has ever not meant it.

\-----

According to Bobbi Morse, Clint Barton is “the biggest mistake in the history of mistakes.” It’s not that Natasha hasn’t heard this sentiment before, or something like it, but she is in the middle of her weekly physical and isn’t sure how exactly this connects to the blood pressure cuff around her arm. Having previously disregarding the doctor’s appearance as irrelevant to the appointment at hand, she now slides her eyes over Dr. Morse’s tall stature, athletic build, and artful knot of champagne-tinted hair. She then flicks her attention to Clint, who has left off his usual routine of making faces outside the glassed-in examination room in favor of contemplating his shoes with more determination than usual.

“A mistake you’ve made,” Natasha replies, no question mark necessary.

Dr. Morse waggles her left ring finger, where Natasha can see a band of skin just a shade lighter than the rest. “Two years divorced next month,” she declares, scribbling addendums to Natasha’s records. It’s her turn to scan a critical eye over Clint’s loitering form across the glass. “Trust me, I can’t say it enough:  _ mistake.” _

She hands Natasha off to Clint with an expression so blatantly warning that she wonders what horrendous atrocity he committed while married. “How many times was the word ‘mistake’ used?” he asks; she notes that he doesn’t quite wait until they’re out of Dr. Morse’s earshot.

“Three,” Natasha shrugs. “Did you sleep with her sister or something?”

He smiles, eyes tight. “Or something,” he says. The story is pushing at his seams and she wants to take out her interrogation tools and rip them open; but he is not a target, she remembers, and she doesn’t have instruments that aren’t jagged and sharp. She directs her eyes forward, peels her attention from the stiffened lines of his forehead. “Anyway,” he continues belatedly, the lightness in his voice patently false, “Three is pretty low. I heard she hit seven with Agent Drew the other month.”

She only knows how to open people by force, with serrated blades and Y-incisions. When she learns how to pry ribs apart and replace them without leaving a scar, when she learns how to operate instead of eviscerate, she will find out why Clint’s smile sags like a Dalí clock and why he doesn’t have a matching faded shadow on his left hand.

\-----

According to Clint Barton, Clint Barton is “the absolute  _ worst _ person in the world. I mean it, Romanoff,” he continues, breath ragged as she hauls his arm over her shoulder and begins to heave his mostly dead weight across the street. “If it was down to me and, I dunno, Victor von Doom, you should definitely save Doom.”

“The day I save Victor von Doom is the day Fury dances naked down the Helicarrier,” Natasha says through gritted teeth. She forgets sometimes that Clint is over six feet tall, but it’s all come flying back in her face now that their milk run has gone awry and she’s left to drag him through the streets of Uyuni. 

Clint wheezes the most pathetic laugh she’s ever heard. “He does that every week,” he slurs, vowels mixing together in a poor imitation of a joke. “‘Sides, Doom is a genius. I don’t have anything to contribute ‘cept my perfect eyesight.”

She takes slow, measured steps, spacing out her energy to last the remaining couple of blocks. Clint stumbles gamely along, wincing when he accidentally sets weight on his broken leg. Natasha rather doubts he’d be able to successfully aim the pistol clutched in his free hand, but she’s not about to pick a fight right now. “That’s hardly true,” she grunts instead. “You’re--that is, you have lots of talents, like--”

“See?” he laughs, though it quickly turns into a cough as he inhales the dust in the air. “You can’t think of anything.”

The doorway of their safe house is in sight and Natasha ups the pace, grabbing Clint’s unused gun and dispatching two cartel members with efficient shots to the knees. “I’m a little distracted,” she points out, propping him against the doorjamb and stabbing in the code. He falls more than walks through the open door and makes a beeline for the single bed while she radios Coulson for extraction. By the time she has a second to come and check on him, Clint is asleep.

For the first time in hours, there is quiet. Natasha slumps in the cane-backed chair by the bed and wipes beads of sweat from his forehead and her own. “You have perfect aim,” she tells Clint’s sleeping form, “which I think is worth saving. Anyone can be a genius, right; that guy Stark is smarter than Doom, probably, so we’re covered there. And you’re objectively a good agent, even though you act like a dumbass 98% of the time.”

There are other reasons why she’d save Clint over Victor von Doom, over most other SHIELD agents, even: he never treats anyone with disrespect who doesn’t deserve it, he doesn’t make her feel like she’s tainted, he is the first person who looked at her and saw something other than a weapon. A safehouse is a terrible place to reveal this type of sentiment, as there are recording devices tucked into every corner; besides, Natasha would literally rather set herself on fire than tell Clint she cares about him in any way.

Still, he is injured, and it’s because he’s gamely accompanied her through every hoop and hurdle SHIELD sets up for her to jump. If he hadn’t offered her this job, if he hadn’t saved her life, he’d be back on the Helicarrier right now with a cup of coffee and an unbroken tibia. 

“I bet you’re a better friend than Dr. Doom,” she says quietly, and his hands wraps around hers as he begins to snore.


	3. a thousand pages, give or take

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint has a surprising number of books for a guy who seems to spend most of his time drinking beer and watching baseball.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Prompt:** Early on in their partnership, Natasha discovers that Clint is an avid reader. (A long-delayed fill from last summer's be_compromised prompt-a-thon!)  
>  **Title from:** "Paperback Writer," The Beatles

“I can’t believe you had me raid someone else’s apartment,” she fumes, upending her bag onto his hospital bed. “Some mentor you’re turning out to be.”

Clint wipes a bleary eye and edges away from the mess she’s dropped on his sheets. “I know I’m full of drugs at the moment,” he mumbles, “But I have _no_ idea what you’re talking about.”

“The _apartment,”_ she repeats with a huff. “With all the _books.”_

He grins with an unnecessary amount of satisfaction. “You think I can’t read, Romanoff? I’m hurt.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “Don’t be stupid,” she snaps, “Of course you can read; it’s just--” It’s just that the four bookshelves crammed into his living room are overflowing with books, so much so that stacks have migrated to the floor and the coffee table and the kitchen counter. It’s just that he’d instructed her to bring him the book on his nightstand, which was surprising enough, but there were _six,_ each bookmarked at various stages. It’s just that there’s a cabinet next to his closet, glass-paned, clearly handcrafted, and it protects not rare editions but bundles of crumbly pages held together with shoestrings and rubber bands, Hamilton’s _Mythology_ and Barnum’s _The Art of Money-Making_ and Waite’s _Tarot_.

“It’s just that nobody expects a carny kid to love reading,” he answers for her. She watches as he leans back his hospital bed, props his hands behind his head in his favorite position of fake nonchalance. This chip has clearly been on his shoulder long before they met, and she gets all the confirmation she needs when he twists his lips and drawls, “Well, we had to have _something_ to do once all the pockets were picked.”

Every response seems like the wrong one, so she defaults to blunt honesty. “It’s not because you grew up in a circus,” she explains. “I’ve never even been to a circus. It’s because the only non-work interests you ever mention are baseball and video games.”

There is a long pause in which Clint considers her through narrowed eyes and Natasha gazes evenly back. “Fine,” he says eventually, “I guess.” He pauses again, and she knows the next question: “You’ve _never_ been to the circus?”

“You think the Red Room gave us time off for good behavior?” she asks, waving the question away before he can really think about it, before the smashed up emotions of anger and pity can wander onto his face. “Anyway. Tell me what you’re reading.”

He reads comedic fiction when he’s sick or injured: “laughter _is_ the best medicine, you know,” he tells her with a toothy grin. When he needs to focus on a mission, he picks up poetry, “Longfellow the night I brought you in,” and nonfiction on quinjets and westerns when flying commercial. There is a category of reading for every mood or activity, apparently, covering a broader range of topics and genres than Natasha expects him to be interested in.

The only thing he refuses to read is philosophy. “My dad read philosophy,” he says, dismissive. “I don’t have time for that.” Natasha opens her mouth in search of details, but he picks up one of the books wedged up against his hip and flips it open. “Here, listen, I’ve been reading Dumas,” and then she is plunged into Edmond Dantès’ merciless revenge. The plot is somewhat convoluted, but interrupting would mean that Clint stops reading, that the tapestry his voice is weaving would be cut short and fall apart. So he reads and she listens and they both startle when the nurse comes in to end visiting hours.

Once he’s back on his feet, Clint starts pushing books her direction, dropping slim volumes into her hands at every turn. “Neruda, you’ll like him,” or “yeah, I know, but if you don’t read _Doctor Zhivago_ then you won’t be a real defector.” Natasha doesn’t follow his reading schedule, but picks her careful way through his offerings, reading each night until her eyes dry up and cross.

“You don’t have to read everything he gives you,” Coulson points out with a smirk. “Just tell him you don’t have time and he’ll get the hint.”

But she has time; she _wants_ to have time, wants to crawl into every book in existence and shroud herself in words. She’s only ever read mission statements, briefs and covert documents, but never for pleasure, never because the leather cover struck sparks against her fingertips. In the privacy of her room, she reads translations of Rumi aloud, savoring the way words lift from her tongue and fill the air like smoke. There were no books in the Red Room because books meant thinking and thinking meant rebellion, so she reads _Fahrenheit 451_ and _Miramar_ and _The House of the Spirits._ “Give me something I won’t like,” she demands, and he gives her _Heart of Darkness,_ which is enraging, and _Into the Wild,_ which is frustrating, and _Ulysses,_ which might be the first thing she ever gives up on.

“Everyone gives up on _Ulysses,”_ he assures her when she shoves it back into his hands. It is raining and the drops splatter against the window pane as he lifts the pages with one gentle finger. “See? You got further than I did.” Clint is never mad when Natasha doesn’t like books, when she stomps in without greeting and complains about Hemingway’s shitty style or how fucking stupid _Wuthering Heights_ was; if anything, he’s excited, considering the way his eyes light up as he launches into a tirade about _A Farewell to Arms._

It occurs to Natasha that she never sees him sharing books with other agents, has never bumped into anyone else using his apartment as a personal library. Clint drinks with some of the STRIKE guys, and watches baseball with Phil, but he only seems to share his books with her. She’s not so naive to think this means he trusts her, necessarily, but it’s something, a single sprout poking through fallow garden soil. Fury still won’t let her listen in on planning meetings, and her sparring partners still expect her to choke them to death mid-workout, but Clint lends her books with his thoughts scribbled in the margins and doesn’t glance over his shoulder when she wanders behind his back in search of her next read.

Natasha is the type to read late into the night, losing track of time and self until dawn pulls itself into her window one orange-pink inch at a time. Clint, on the other hand, goes to sleep early and never answers her midnight texts about Margaret Atwood or Gandalf’s character flaws or the faulty detective work of Nancy Drew. She is thus surprised as well as startled when her phone buzzes at 1:08. _i’m just saying, what gives plato the right to ruin some guy’s reality by making him stare into the sun????_ writes Clint, and he rapidly follows with three more texts of diminishing grammatical or logical sense. There’s an evident sense of distress in his garbled tone, and its apparent source is the philosophy that he previously claimed to never read. _Philosophy?_ she types, and when he answers _philosophy is for drunks and that’s what i am right now,_ she cinches the belt of her robe and heads for his quarters.

“Nat!” he practically shouts when he swings the door open. _The Complete Works of Plato_ is wedged under one arm and a mostly empty bottle of Crown Royal whiskey is under the other. He looks wildly for a clock, locates one on his microwave, and squints. “It’s super late. Why are you awake? Why am _I_ awake?”

She steps in until he has to step back, shuts the door behind her before his megaphone voice can rouse his neighbors. Up close, she can see the red streaks in his eyes and smell the dry sweetness of the whiskey seeping from his pores. “You texted me,” she reminds him, keeping her voice smooth and gentle. “Plato, huh? I thought you hated the guy.”

Clint wrinkles his nose. “He thinks he’s hot shit because he knew Socrates,” he claims, as if Plato is someone he personally knows. “Everyone knows Aristotle is better.”

“Of course,” Natasha agrees easily, more concerned with steering Clint into his room. He thumps onto the bed, readily relinquishing the book but keeping a firm hand on the whiskey. With a sigh, she gathers her robe around her and settles herself next to him on the bed. “Is there any particular reason you’re drinking?” she ventures at last. “Because you hate Plato?”

He rolls onto his side, pulling his knees up until they knock at the bottle tucked under his chin. “Nah. It’s just September 20th.” Curled up, he resembles a little kid, and Natasha fights off the urge to push the sandy hair off his forehead. “And on September 20th, I drink because I hate…” Each word trails out slower and slower, sticking like molasses behind his teeth. “I hate my…” A yawn replaces the last word and he shivers, his eyelids drooping until his spiky lashes rest on his cheek. “My dad.”

Cautiously, Natasha slides from the bed and folds the quilt over him until he burrows in and all she can see is the cowlick at the top of his head. His breathing relaxes into evenness, then into snores, and Natasha tiptoes from the room already flipping through the book of Plato in her arms. She’ll have to wait until morning to decipher Clint, but there’s plenty of time before the sun rises to start reading something new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I chose Longfellow for Clint because of the poem "The Arrow and The Song." Check it out!


	4. send these, the homeless tempest-tost, to me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint is scandalized that Natasha has never been to New York City.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **prompt:** Clint and Natasha do New York, tourist style. (from santiagoinbflat)  
>  **title:** "The New Colossus," Emma Lazarus

“You’ve _never_ been to the Empire State building?”

“No.”

“Statue of Liberty?”

“Nope.”

“Broadway?”

“Does it count if I killed someone in their box?”

Clint slants a unimpressed look over his feet propped on the desk. “We’ve _all_ killed someone in their box, Romanoff, so no, that does not count.”

Natasha lifts one unbothered shoulder. “Then no.”

“This is outrageous,” he proclaims, his boots slapping to the floor like exclamation points. “We’re going to New York City, right now.” Natasha has always been curious about New York, the capitalist mecca whose name still leaves a bitter taste on the tongue the Red Room programmed. Her specialization there had always been Europe, but New York figures so heavily in American mythology that she suspects making her own way through the city of legend will teach her not just about the city, but about the country that raises it up on high.

Unfortunately, there are a few key obstacles to Clint’s plan; namely, that she isn’t allowed to leave without heavy supervision, and that they’re right in the middle of planning an 084 extraction deep in the Xinjiang province. These are waved away by Clint, who merely grins and says, “I’ll handle it.”

Natasha solves problems by walking around them, examining every facet, every entrance and exit point, until she knows it better than her own face. This takes time and patience: she often researches, rehearses, and gathers materials over a matter of days or weeks. She settles for nothing less than perfection, and in her quick calculations, getting Fury to sign off on this trip will take precisely six business days, give or take three hours.

Clint, apparently, “handles” things by asking Fury, “Sir, did you know that Romanoff has never been to Manhattan?” at the end of their weekly status report.

Fury looks up from his desk and fixes his irritated gaze on the archer. “When I said, ‘any questions,’ it was rhetorical, Barton,” he grumbles, but Clint just stares back, patient, guileless. “Of course she’s been to Manhattan,” he finally adds with a sigh. “Giuseppi Parri, back in ‘99, right? Intermission of _Amadeus?_ ”

Natasha nods, impressed, and Fury almost smiles. “What is _with_ you people?” Clint mutters. “No. A quick trip into town to shoot someone--”

 _“Strangle,_ Agent, this is the theater--”

“You can’t shoot someone in their box, Clint, you’d ruin the upholstery--”

 _“--To murder someone,_ is not the same as sightseeing.” Clint turns to Fury, eyes bright and earnest. “New York City is the American dream, the greatest city in the world! Sir, how can we expect Romanoff to acclimate to American life if she doesn’t understand the draw of the Big Apple?”

“I find that threats of imprisonment or death usually do the trick.” This is accompanied by his most wolfish grin, the one he showed Natasha when she sat at this same desk in handcuffs and pleaded for amnesty. It’s easy to forget, amid his sometimes-kind eyes and horrible all-staff Joke Of The Day emails, that Nick Fury is just as dangerous as she is. Natasha adjusts her calculations: now that Clint’s stuck his foot in it, it will take seven additional business days to get Fury to budge.

Clint dredges a sigh up from his toes, and when he speaks, his tone has shifted dramatically. “Sir,” he says as if relinquishing a great secret, “Do you recall when Agent Coulson took me to Wrigley Field?”

Fury leans back in his chair, surprise crowding his brows gravely together. “I do, Agent,” he says. The room lapses into silence, and Natasha has no idea what has just transpired, but then Fury nods once and says, “I’ll give you the weekend. Talk to travel about accommodations. Dismissed.”

“What the hell was that?” Natasha asks once they’re far enough down the hall. Something had passed between the two men, an understanding twisting like steel cables.

“Nothing,” he says, grinning from ear to ear. Were they alone in the hallway, Natasha suspects he’d jump up and click his heels. “Pack your bags; we leave in two days.”

\-----

Clint has an apartment in Brooklyn, he tells her, but they stay in Manhattan “for the experience.” As far as Natasha can tell, “the experience” involves aggressive pigeons, suffocating traffic, and old rainwater dripping down the back of her collar. She’s visited plenty of cities around the globe, smaller and larger, cleaner and filthier. So far, New York is equally dingy and cramped as the rest of the world, only with taller shadows.

“Shut up,” Clint says, waving her criticisms away. “This is an education.” It’s Friday evening and they’re in line for the ballet, tickets wrinkling in the tight clutch of his hand. Natasha generally avoids the ballet, mainly because of the Red Room but also because, frankly, it bores her. Still, this is Clint’s educational trip, which has conveniently extricated them from the responsibility for that Xinjiang 084, so she puts on her game face and feigns interest.

They’re three yards from the door when Clint, in the middle of listing his favorite pizza places within five blocks, makes an abrupt change of topic. _“You_ don’t like ballet,” he accuses, turning to point in her face. “I can see it in your eyes.”

“I--” Natasha says, too taken aback to lie. “I--well, no, I don’t.”

By now, they’re one patron away from the window. Clint looks at the tickets curved into the shape of his palm, then looks at Natasha, who tries not to grimace. “Fuck it,” he says, ignoring the man impatiently gesturing through the window and instead handing the tickets to a couple in the lottery line. “I hate ballet; I only got these because of, well, you know.” He loops his arm through hers and guides her out of the throng of people and back onto the sidewalk. “Let’s see what New York’s really about.”

They start, of course, with food. “Waiting in line makes me hungry,” Clint rationalizes, steering them into a hole in the wall that features a neon OPEN sign buzzing through a single oil-spattered window. He slaps cash on the laminate counter and returns to their table with three enormous wedges that hang over their paper plates and soak them with grease. “Best on Broadway,” proclaims the hand-lettered sign on the tip jar, and considering the way Clint demolishes two slices, he obviously agrees. Natasha, who has only had the pizza at SHIELD at which Clint turns his nose up, nibbles more cautiously at first, savoring the gooey cheese, the way the thin layer of tomato sauce has sunk into the crisp crust. She’s not sure if it’s actually delicious or she’s just hungry: “It’s delicious,” Clint assures her. “You’ll never be able to eat SHIELD pizza again.”

“You don’t know that,” Natasha says, rolling her eyes and shredding the flimsy dispenser napkins in her attempt to wipe grease off her hands. “What’s next in the ‘real New York’ experience?”

Every place Clint loves in New York is rough and grimy, their charm lying partially in their determination to continue existing in the shadows of shiny glass and chrome structures that reach for new heights in the sky. They hopscotch through Manhattan, jaywalking across still-busy avenues and avoiding the suspicious puddles on subway seats on the way to his favorite haunts. There’s a cafe where Clint is greeted by name, and whose elderly, elegant owner casts an appraising look over Natasha’s appearance before handing her the cup of Turkish coffee she didn’t know she wanted. They visit a dusky Harlem jazz club where the paint peels up from the baseboards and the feature artist’s voluptuous voice drips like honey into their ears, then squeeze into the standing room of a rock gig in Chelsea that shivers the posters papering the wall. At Josie’s bar in Hell’s Kitchen, where the sticky floors pull at her spike heels, Natasha talks their way out of two bar fights, only to initiate her own when she catches a hipster scumbag trying to drop something into his date’s drink. By 3 AM, when they finally drag themselves back to their hotel room, a bruise is smeared over Clint’s cheekbones and she’s nursing a split lip of her own.

“New York, man,” Clint shrugs happily, as if the city is simply an uncontrollable force, a daily tornado that swirls you around and spits you back out, and that this is somehow what makes it so wonderful. He whistles off down the hall with the ice bucket, and Natasha is left to dab the blood off her lip in confusion.

\-----

In Volgograd, where Natasha was born, there is a statue of a woman. Sword aloft, face chiseled with imperative need, she summons the people of Russia down to the Volga River. _The Motherland Calls,_ she is named, 279 cement feet of vengeance for those who fell at the battle of Stalingrad. Until 1967, she was the largest statue in the world; she still dwarfs every other female statue on earth.

Natasha remembers, as a young girl, staring up at the tip of the sword and struggling to fathom how anything could reach so far into the sky. She remembers not just the awe, but a sense of purpose, an obligation blooming in her chest like camomile flowers. She remembers the Motherland calling to her, beckoning, reaching cold cement fingers into her and pulling her along by the heart into the ranks of Russians fulfilling their calling, honoring their history, securing their future.

Most of all, though, she remembers that these aren’t her memories at all, that the blurry lines and jagged edges are from the Red Room hastily stitching a new quilt of memories into her temporal lobes. _Lie,_ she tells herself, _Lie, lie, lie,_ and for each lie she identifies, she climbs another step on the tightly spiraling staircase inside the Statue of Liberty.

It is 5:30 am. The sprawling city is shaking itself out of bed, but Natasha has been awake for hours; really, she never fell asleep. After two hours ticked by, she finally stopped trying and swiped Clint’s key from his bedside table before tiptoeing out the door. Fury’s given them special permission to travel without her usual security escort, and she’s supposed to be on her best behavior, toeing the line and staying in Clint’s eyesight; but--

But she watched the digital clock readout rearrange itself every sixty seconds and felt an undeniable itch in the soles of her feet. But she wanted to see the city that never sleeps before it really woke up, before the joggers and tourists clogged the sidewalks. But she recognized the opportunity to be alone, _really_ alone, for the first time since her defection, and was out the door before she could change her mind.

So it is 5:30 am, and while Clint sleeps on in Midtown, Natasha climbs. She hadn’t intended to end up here, had thought to wander Central Park or maybe sneak into the stacks of the New York Public Library; but inevitably, like millions of regular Americans, she was drawn to Battery Park and the Ellis Island ferry. And as the small boat drew closer to Liberty Island, she found herself comparing the statue, emblematic of America, with the woman who stood over Volgograd. Lady Liberty is shorter, softer, made of copper whose green oxidization, a prominent defect, somehow only served to make her more popular. The Red Room could never satisfactorily explain to Natasha why such a clearly inferior monument was so beloved not only by her country, but by the whole world.

The answer, she hopes, will be found at the top of these stairs, and quickly, so she can slip back to the hotel before Clint wakes up and sounds the alarm. She climbs the 373rd step, the next, the next, and suddenly there is only one more step to a small walkway crossing the bridge of the crown. The park ranger nods sleepily at her as she steps up, situating herself in the very middle of the row of small rectangular windows. It feels anticlimactic, after all that climbing, to simply lean out an open window and rest her hands on the statue’s grooved hair.

And then the sun rises, lifting leisurely from New York Harbor’s waters one spectacular,  unhurried minute at a time. While the city bustles, while the new sputterings of foghorns and motorboats ripple across the water, Natasha watches the tablet cradled in Liberty’s arm slowly turn from green to gold in the morning light. Even the murky water of the harbor glints and shimmers, beautiful as it hasn’t been in centuries.

Eventually, the sun fixes itself in the sky and Natasha can tear her eyes from the horizon and look around the cavernous hollow of Lady Liberty’s head. The ceiling, as it were, hangs low, and other than the view, there isn’t a whole lot to look at. She wants to linger, wants to ask the park ranger why everyone loves this place so much; but said park ranger is shifting her weight in a way that suggests that Natasha should move along, so she takes one last fruitless stare out the window before heading back down the stairs.

It just doesn’t make sense. Why do the American people make pilgrimage to this short, corroded statue day after day, year after year? Natasha counts backwards as she descends, cranky, tired, frustrated. She wanted this trip to open her eyes, to untangle some of the convoluted American psyche she still struggles to grasp, but all she has is a headache and an untied shoe.

It’s when she kneels to fix her shoelace that she sees it, a tiny scribble on a stairwell post. Graffiti is strictly forbidden in the statue, but nevertheless Natasha deciphers, “2006, In honor of Grandpa, 1906.” There is no name, but it doesn’t matter; the anonymity is what fastens the note to her mind even as she continues down the stairs. With no name, it could be any or every person who climbs these stairs. Surely not every person who summits the statue has this history, but for Natasha, who doesn’t even know where her parents were born, this idea resonates. She’d like to imagine that she’s stood in the same places as her father, her father’s father; she’d like to think that once her mother had leaned on the same railing, watched the same ocean, tilted her head in the same confusion.

Of course, the graffiti artist can’t really know what their grandfather’s experience was a century earlier, no more than Natasha can picture her mother’s face. But if this is what the Statue of Liberty is for--climbing the same steps, filling up a cold, hollow statue with the people and history she represents--then she can see the value in protecting it. If people visit this statue not out of nationalistic pride, but to touch the same worn down handrails as their ancestors and feel the static shock of connection, then she can understand.

When she arrives back at the ferry dock, Clint has one foot kicked up against the gate. He’s lounging, or trying to, but Natasha can see the line of sweat along his collar and knows he must have booked it here. “Sorry,” she says, half sincere: she _had_ meant to get back before he could notice.

Clint lifts one shoulder. “You find what you were looking for?” he asks.

Natasha looks over her shoulder, where Liberty’s profile stares unwavering out to sea. “I think so,” she sighs. “Yeah.”

He studies her, then tucks a quick smile into a nod. “I’m glad,” he says honestly, swinging the gate back so they can walk together to the ferry. They’re quiet together until the ferry captain announces they’re back in New York waters; then Clint picks the conversation back up. “And I didn’t tell Fury, you know, so you owe me. Know what that means?”

She does; even so, when Clint snaps a picture of them in matching Yankee caps and foam fingers at the game, she still makes him swear to keep it to himself.


	5. til I try, I'll never know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha is sent on her first solo mission; a test for SHIELD and for herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **title:** "Defying Gravity" from _Wicked_

There are so many frustrating things about this day that Natasha could, if so inclined, make a list:

At the end of the briefing for her first solo mission, Hill says, “We’ll be watching you, Agent Romanoff,” as if this is supposed to be an effective threat.  _ No fucking shit, _ she doesn’t say, not even to Clint, later, although he’d probably laugh. And Hill even smirks, because they both know that Natasha can’t say anything other than, “Yes, ma’am,” not if she ever wants to get off probation and be treated like anything other than a child.

(Of course, the irony is that the Red Room never treated her like a child, not even when she was a girl with too-long hair and too-trusting eyes. In the Red Room, there is no time for coddling or caution, no patience for probation. In the Red Room, you are loyal, or you are dead.)

\-----

In the hangar bay, Clint says, “Good luck,” but Natasha hears  _ please come back. _ She has plenty riding on the success of this mission--mostly, a loosening of the chokehold SHIELD has on her freedom and the opportunity to say something other than “Yes, ma’am,” at a briefing--but Clint put his career on the line the second his arrow went purposefully wide past her head. He gets desk duty for life if she runs off, Processing Department or something like that. Natasha thinks this would be a waste of an invaluable asset, but nobody’s asking her.

(She shouldn’t care about how this affects Clint, how  _ anything _ she does affects anyone at all. In fact, it would be just what he deserves, for her to fold herself into the shadow of an office building and vanish. A month later, a postcard from the Maldives will drop onto his desk in Processing, signed simply  _ Nat, _ and he’ll shake his head with a weary smile. That would show him.)

(But she won’t, and not just because being 650 miles from the nearest continent makes her skin crawl.)

“I don’t need luck,” she tells him, and the quinjet’s whirring turbines drown out whatever he says back.

\-----

“The objective is simple,” Coulson reminds her for the fiftieth time as the jet lifts away from the ground. “Locate Nagel, and do whatever you feel necessary--short of killing, of course--to acquire the keycard in his wallet. You’ll use the card to access his secured level of your hotel and download his data on the Camp Cathcart project. Extraction will be on the roof.” He’s not even reading the mission brief; at this point, they can both recite the information from memory. She could do this mission in her sleep.

(Considering the Red Room’s methods, some might even say she already has.)

Coulson’s voice gets all soft, what Clint calls his “dad voice.” “You don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with,” he says under the engine’s drone. His hand moves as if he wants to set it on her shoulder, the way he sometimes does when Clint’s being extra hard on himself, and then it drops to his knee. “I’m sure you’ll be great,” he says in that same tone.

“I believe in you.”

\-----

The linen of her dress, damp from the thick Mississippi air, clings to the small of her back. Jackson is sweltering even in the fall, and Natasha makes a show of fanning herself with the wide brim of her hat as she approaches the front desk.

“Is it  _ always _ this hot?” she asks, a frazzled Northerner unprepared for the solid wall of Mississippi humidity.

“‘Fraid so, honey,” says the clerk in rote sympathy, pink frosted lips pursing as she scans her computer screen. “Hmm. It seems your room won’t be ready for a few hours, Ms. Hood; that medical convention at the Coliseum, you know.” Her acrylic nails click as they set a pair of drink vouchers on the quartz countertop. “Why don’t you cool off at the bar? Drinks on us, of course.”

Natasha is used to empty hotel bars, where the sad sack slumped into his whiskey is more than happy to have her “accidentally” brush her breasts against his shoulder and ask “What’s wrong?” in a honeyed voice. Because of the convention, however, the bar is nearly filled with medical workers trying to network for both professional and personal reasons. It takes more than a few tries before she can finally squeeze into an empty seat at the bar and hurriedly order a vodka tonic from the poor, put-upon bartender.

(And she doesn’t even like vodka tonics.)

\-----

Wilfred Nagel, like every other young pretentious doctor in this bar, has terrible pick-up lines. “A girl like you is too pretty to be left alone,” he drawls. His Southern accent is less  _ rough and ready cowboy, _ more  _ just crawled out of the swamp. _

Wilfred Nagel, unlike every other young pretentious doctor in this bar, is her mark, so Natasha simpers and leans up against him. “You’re right,” she murmurs, sweeping a hand over his thigh in search of his wallet. “Keep me company.”

She would have been content to pick his pocket and search his room unobtrusively--no need to overdo it on her first mission alone--but he returns from the bar and shoves her drink into her hands as if this has been the greatest hardship. “We’ve been talking for like half an hour,” he complains in a whine that does his ugly voice no favors. “And I even went to get you another drink. Is this happening or what?” 

“Oh, it’s happening,” Natasha purrs. “I bet your room’s nicer than mine. I’d  _ love _ to see it. Will you show me?”

(They always,  _ always, _ fall for that one.)

Nagel spends the whole elevator ride bragging about how he brought extra security to the hotel. He thinks this underlines how powerful he is; Natasha thinks this underscores how incredible it is that his narcissism hasn’t gotten him killed yet. He waves off the security guards that greet him as the elevator doors open, smarms that “this pretty little thing” doesn’t need a pat down from anyone except him, points out all the “sneaky” cameras they’ve installed in the nooks and corners of his sitting area. “No cameras in the bedroom, though,” he shares with a wink that’s supposed to be charming as he leads her in and closes the door. “Like to keep some things private, if you know what I mean.”

Somehow, he’s still surprised when she pulls out her Glock.

She knows this is a milk run, but it’s still entirely too easy to cinch a few of his dumb power ties around his wrists and ankles, shove one in his mouth, and dump him in the closet. Nagel seems like the kind of creep who’d hide cameras in his bedroom, so Natasha takes care to avert her face from any likely locations, and pulls on soft gloves before putting her thumb over the laptop’s pinhole video camera as she flips it open. 

“What’s your password, asshole?” she calls unnecessarily across the room, but it doesn’t take much investigation to figure out that Nagel is, impossibly, even more full of himself than expected. “ _ WilfredRulez1234? _ That’s embarrassing.”

\-----

She grips her arms until they’re red and angry; she shovels her fingers through her hair until it’s in disarray. It’s easy to squeeze tears out of her eyes, to slam the door in her hurry to escape, to look up at the surprised guards and sob, “He--he’s  _ horrible,” _ until they’re practically climbing over each other to get this crying woman into the elevator and out of their sight. She keeps it up for a few floors, just in case they’re listening.

There are eight floors between Nagel’s “secure” level and the roof, and in these eight floors, Natasha contemplates escape. How simple it would be to get off on floor 11, where her cover, Ms. Hood, is staying, and just walk away. The reason she got away from the Red Room is that they got lazy, stopped tracking her every move, and she slipped like blood between their fingers; and SHIELD isn’t paying nearly as close attention. They call this  _ trust, _ but really it’s foolishness, to expect, no,  _ believe, _ that she is going to come back. She could be on a bus in five minutes, on a plane in twenty--all she has to do is reach out one hand, press just one button… 

The elevator doors swish open to the rooftop patio, and her hand hasn’t moved a single inch. At the bar, Coulson is nursing a scotch and sweating through his standard black suit. “Agent Romanoff,” he says, unruffled even in the heat. “I knew you’d be here soon. Nice job.” He seems entirely unsurprised that she’s here, handing over the thumb drive instead of flagging down a taxi; this sits at odd ends with her own psyche, which is still debating whether or not she’s made the right decision, whether each decision she’s made since Clint’s arrow whizzed wide has been a mistake. 

The helicopter lifts away from the pad and they watch Jackson, Mississippi become a speck of white amidst the green forestation. It isn’t until they’re back on the helicarrier, floating off the Biloxi coast, that she asks, quiet and uncertainty twisting in her chest like never before, “How did you know I’d be there?”

There’s a fan of lines around Coulson’s eyes when he smiles. “I didn’t,” he says, “but I hoped that my belief in your integrity wasn’t misplaced.” He makes the same unsure hand motion from before, wavers, and this time his hand lands on her shoulder for the briefest of moments. “I’m glad to be proven right.” 

\-----

There is one thing, however, that isn’t completely bad:

“Romanoff,” Agent Hill barks, striding up to where Natasha sits in the cafeteria, watching the waves bob against the helicarrier’s hull. “We’re moving forward on the intel you brought back from Jackson. Camp Cathcart, nasty stuff.” Her nostrils flare in a single indication of her disgust for the project’s methods: using African-American inmates as test subjects for recreating Erskine’s super soldier serum. “Fury says you’re off probation, and fully participating in the op from here on out.” She dumps a thick folder next to Natasha’s teacup with a grim smile. “Congratulations. Briefing’s in two hours.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those unfamiliar with Camp Cathcart and Wilfred Nagel, I encourage you to learn about [Isaiah Bradley](http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Isaiah_Bradley_\(Earth-616\)), whose story I've obviously adjusted. If you've read Young Avengers, you might recognize his grandson, [Eli](http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Elijah_Bradley_\(Earth-616\)) as The Patriot!
> 
> Truth time: I'm stumped on where this story goes next. I'm stagnating in the middle of a "Natasha gets her own apartment" storyline and I'm desperate for prompts! If you have an idea of where I should go from here, let me know in the comments!


	6. for the many people

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As it turns out, the secret to friendship with Maria Hill is cinnamon rolls and a willingness to sit on an endless selection of couches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the be_compromised 2017 promptathon! I grew up in northern Virginia and this IKEA provided about 95% of my college furniture <3
> 
> **prompt:** A while after Natasha arrives at SHIELD, she finally gets approval to live in her own apartment. After her initial excitement, she realises one thing: she has to go to IKEA. 
> 
> **title:** IKEA mission statement: "... We try to make everyday life better for the many people."

By and large, Natasha’s work at Camp Cathcart and subsequent assignment to Strike Team Delta at the Triskelion convinces most of SHIELD that she’s not going to murder them all in their beds. Even so, when Hill leans around punching bag she’s been spotting for her and says, “No offense, Romanoff, but you look like shit today,” the noise in the gym immediately drops by half volume as every agent stops quietly gossiping, leans closer, and tries listen over the whir of their treadmills.

It is important to note that Natasha actually quite likes Deputy Director Hill. She’s blunt and frighteningly competent, a good enough fighter even if she _does_ telegraph every left cross she ever throws, and runs her ops so tightly that Coulson, the man whose drawers are lined with rulers so that all his pencils align, thinks she needs to loosen up. Plus, there’s a lot to be said for her willingness to make such a comment when her face is so close to the Black Widow’s fists--and with half a smile, too.

Perversely, Natasha enjoys the way the entire gym tilts on edge while she pushes her hair out of her eyes. “You’re lucky that I’m feeling even worse than I look,” she finally replies, adding a grin so the gym occupants will, collectively, stop holding their breath. There are more disappointed sighs than is really appropriate, all things considered, and Natasha rolls her eyes at Hill before beginning the process of unwinding her handwraps. It’s a few minutes before everyone gets back to business and Hill sidles over to shoulder out the door with her.

“You’re not still injured from Baoding, are you?” she asks, a sliver of concern in her casual tone. “I thought Medical cleared you.”

“No, I--” Natasha shakes her head more emphatically than necessary: another trip to Medical is the last thing she wants. She firms her shoulders. “No, ma’am.”

Hill stops and studies her, gaze so meticulous that Natasha, who once perched immobile next to a gargoyle for six straight hours, fights the urge to fidget. “Well,” she says, survey complete, “What is it, then? Honestly, Romanoff, you’ve got bags like potato sacks under your eyes.”

She suddenly-- _stupidly_ \--misses Barton. Currently staking out an 084 in Entebbe, Clint would have diagnosed the issue within minutes of her entering the gym, and would no doubt be using this time to talk her into whatever solution he’d come up with for a problem she’d never admitted to having. It’s a level of codependence that stresses her out if she thinks too much about it; but on days like today, when she’s flattened with exhaustion, it’s something she’d desperately like to have.

But Natasha’s built herself around making do with what she has, and what she has right now is Deputy Director Hill. “It’s my new apartment, ma’am,” she confesses. It’s only been a few days at the tiny place she’s rented in Adams Morgan, and Natasha loves, _loves_ , so many things about it: the green windows with their deep sills, the scuff of the hardwoods and the hexagonal bathroom tiles, the clean white walls and cheerful creak of the radiator and the fact that all these things are _hers_ and hers alone. There’s only one problem: “It’s not furnished…”

“Most places aren’t,” Hill agrees, her tone leading patiently.

Natasha looks over her shoulder and down the hall, hands set defensively on her hips. “Well, it’s not like I’ve got a storage unit of furniture just sitting around,” she just manages not to snap. “And Barton said I could stay on his couch for a while, but…” It’s not that she gives two shits about office gossip or the rumor mill, not when there’s _actual meaningful work_ to be done, but it’s the least she can do to resist adding fuel to what everyone already says about them. Plus, he’d left for Entebbe, and her recently developed conscience suspects that breaking into a coworker’s apartment to sleep on his couch is [a] not appropriate and [b] not something a decent person (or friend?) should do.

Hill is too good of an agent to let realization rise as blatantly across her face as the sun, but Natasha’s an expert and sees it anyway. “You’re--you’ve been sleeping on the floor?” she asks. She’s trying to be careful, her tone pitched as if Natasha is an easily startled bird. “For how long?”

“About a week.” Natasha shrugs: they both know that she’s done worse than curl up with only a hard floor for a pillow, and for longer. She’s just not used to people noticing her fatigue, or caring.

“And…” There’s a little frown as Hill appears to struggle with herself. “And when are you getting furniture, then?”

Another shrug: “Whenever. It’s not like I have a car, so maybe this weekend I’ll walk around and see what I can find.”

Hill’s placid veneer cracks. “This _weekend?_ ” she barks. “Agent Romanoff, it is _Monday._ ” Natasa suspects that shrugging again would not be wise, so she settles for quirking a corner of her mouth, which Hill doesn’t seem to like any better. She paces the width of the narrow hallway twice before returning, one finger pointed rather close to Natasha’s face. “You’re going down to Ops for a sleeping bag, or a cot, or _whatever_ , and then you’re going home to take a nap. I’ll pick you up at 4:30. That’s an _order_ ,” she adds before any argument can be made.

“Yes, ma’am,” Natasha sighs, and waits for Hill to stalk off before finding her way to Ops.

\-----

In Natasha’s private opinion, a blind _babushka_ could probably drive better than Hill, and with half as much yelling. It’s rush hour, and Hill’s half out her window threatening to drive her enormous SUV over the cute little Fiat in front of them. “Fuck it,” she growls at last, rooting around under her seat for what Natasha _prays_ isn’t a gun; but it’s a bank of lights that she slaps onto the roof before flipping a switch, which illuminates another series of lights in the trunk and sets an alarm wailing. Traffic grudgingly parts to let them through; the Fiat’s elderly driver flips them off and Hill smiles back, all teeth.

“Nick does this all the time,” she says in self-defense as they cruise along the shoulder lane and ignore the openly hostile stares of other drivers. The idea that Nick Fury would at any point invite an octogenarian to eat his “entire ass,” as Hill has just done, seems to Natasha highly unlikely, so she assumes Hill is referencing the use of the siren to muscle pass the miles and miles (and _miles_ ) of traffic that crawls away from Washington, DC. Indeed, they’re 26 miles south of the city when they finally exit the highway in Woodbridge, and yet lines of cars still stretch southward into the horizon.

“You call him _Nick?”_ Natasha can’t resist asking as they navigate the suburban shopping district.

Hill spares her half a glare. _“I_ do. _You_ don’t.” She turns her attention back to driving, apparently under the mistaken impression that Natasha’s curiosity is satisfied; fortunately for her, all further line of inquiry is derailed entirely by the appearance, down the road, of what appears to be a two story blue box rising above the tree line.

“What is that?” she asks, nebulous apprehension forming into solid dread as the yellow wording on the side of the box becomes clear: _IKEA._ Natasha whirls to Hill, whose smile only has the tiniest fraction of innocence. “Are you serious?”

Hill steals a parking spot and climbs out, slamming the door. “I’m sorry, _which_ one of us is sleeping on a floor right now?” she asks through the passenger window glass, making Natasha contemplate just how much trouble she’d get into if she murdered the deputy director of SHIELD after all. Rationally, she knows that she needs to sleep on a mattress tonight or her spine will be hopelessly misaligned for another week; on the other hand, there’s a reason the store has a reputation for misery, and she’s so tired that she’s almost willing to forego a bed a bit longer if it means avoiding the labyrinth of strife.

 _“Labyrinth of strife”? You need to sleep in a real bed again,_ she tells herself, kicking the door open and taking minor enjoyment in Hill jumping out of the way. Only minor, though: the grimace she presents is full of resignation to her fate. “Agent Barton wouldn’t make me do this,” she says, adding a sulky, “Ma’am,” at the end just in case.

“Agent Barton sleeps on a futon,” Hill points out, setting off for the escalators that rise into the store with a long stride that has Natasha’s shorter legs pumping to keep up. “And we’re off duty, stop calling me _ma’am.”_ In the lobby, she grabs a store map, a flimsy measuring tape, and a golf pencil, and adds a pristine folded paper from her own back pocket to the pile before dumping it all in Natasha’s hands. “Maria’s fine. Let’s go,” and she’s pushed up the escalator without any further discussion.

Natasha shoves everything into her pockets and unfolds the sharply creased SHIELD letterhead, which turns out to be a list printed in Maria’s severe handwriting. She writes in all capital letters, lending urgency to otherwise innocuous items like _BED_ and _DRESSER_ and _ARMCHAIR?_ It’s an extensive list, to the point that she wonders both if they’re going to have time to get everything and if Maria thinks she has a safety deposit box stuffed full of money somewhere. (She does, of course, but that’s for emergencies. _Furniture_ is not an emergency.)

And another thing: “When did you have time to write this list?” Natasha demands, stalking up to where Maria is now testing a series of couches with more intent than is really necessary: bouncing experimentally, inspecting the thickness of the cushions, the merest hint of a smile as she folds and unfolds the pull-out couch. It’s almost as if… “Maria,” Natasha all but gasps, “Do you… _like_ this place?”

Even if Natasha wasn’t an expert in guilty expressions, the deep red blush that settles across Maria’s tanned face is a dead giveaway. “Everything is so _affordable,”_ she gushes, clutching involuntarily at the nearest checked throw pillow. “It’s colorful and so easy and the _cinnamon rolls_ …” Natasha waits while she trails off in temporary ecstasy, not entirely sure this isn’t a bizarre hallucination caused by sleep deprivation. “Anyway,” says Hill, reclaiming her dignity as she stands, “You needed help, whether or not you were going to admit it, and I needed a reason to visit IKEA. This is a win-win, Romanoff.” With two hands, she reverses their positions and shoves Natasha down onto the sofa. “Now try this couch, it comes in _ten_ colors.”

\-----

Somewhere between the shelving units and dining tables, Natasha gives in to Maria’s relentless enthusiasm for all things IKEA. It’s her catlike nature to hold a general disdain for most things, but she finds herself forced to acknowledge that flopping enthusiastically onto about twenty different bed frames and investigating every drawer of every desk is actually kind of… fun. Outside of the office, Hill turns out have both a much better sense of humor and a far keener interest in office gossip than Natasha expected, which makes the whole experience that much more bearable.

By the time they check off the last of the list (why Natasha needs _PLANTS_ from IKEA, she never gets a satisfactory answer) and wheel a heavily laden dolly out to the car, the sun is fully set. Aside from the basil green sofa and corresponding armchair being delivered the coming weekend, everything she’s purchased fit snugly in the back of Maria’s SUV. This is pronounced by Maria to be “IKEA magic,” and then they’re roaring back up to DC on finally-cleared highways.

“Don’t worry, I called backup,” Maria promises as they pull up outside Natasha’s building and she realizes that no amount of “IKEA magic” is going to levitate all these packages up the stairs. Half expecting to find the entire STRIKE division horded around her doorstep, Natasha blinks when it’s only Melinda May toting a pizza, a case of beer, and her standard unimpressed expression.

“I see you’ve found a new unsuspecting victim,” she calls as Maria parks and hops out of the car. “How bad was it?” she asks, raising an eyebrow in Natasha’s direction.

“Three hours,” Natasha groans, slumping against a railing.

“Shit, and here I thought _one_ hour was bad.” May smirks in sympathy. “Did she make you look at the curtains? Did you get the lecture about how the IKEA in Chicago has _three_ floors and is _so much better?”_

“It is,” Maria says over them both. “Shut up and help me carry this table.” What with Natasha’s enhanced strength, carrying everything up takes no time at all, and soon the three are on the wood floors, backs against the pine counters as they pass around the pizza and beer. She doesn’t know enough people at SHIELD yet to care too much about the gossip Maria and May swap as they eat, but she’s worn down and it’s a nice feeling to be included in a conversation just by sitting in the same room.

“All right, enough lazing,” Maria announces eventually, heaving to her feet with a groan. It’s with slow movements that they push themselves back to work, Natasha and May teaming up to decipher the hieroglyphic kitchen table instructions while Maria, a self-appointed expert, tackles the chairs on her own. What surprises Natasha most is the amount of laughter that rings through the apartment. They are, admittedly, probably three of the most serious people in the agency; and yet Maria is the first one to laugh when she builds the chairs entirely backwards, and May has an anecdote about every song that comes on the radio, and Natasha can’t fully explain what exactly is so funny about the scowling caricature of Fury’s face that she draws on a box, eyepatch and all, and pops onto Maria’s head when she’s not looking.

“It’s because you’re exhausted,” Maria reminds her as Natasha gulps down the last of her laughter. “Let’s have cinnamon rolls and then you can go to sleep.”

“Oh, I don’t need one,” Natasha tries, but Maria points her into one chair and May into another before dropping the pan of rolls on the table.

“Non-negotiable,” she insists, using a new spatula to scoop warm cinnamon frosted goodness onto Natasha’s new plates. “This is me saying thank you for letting me steamroll you into an IKEA trip.” Her smile is only slightly self-conscious. “I know not it’s not for everyone, so thanks for being a good sport.”

Natasha bites her lip. “No, thank _you,”_ she insists. “Otherwise, I’d be sleeping on the floor again tonight.” She pauses before begrudgingly adding, “I guess I’d be willing to go again…”

May laughs. “Big mistake, kid,” she tells her as Maria pumps her fist in victory. “You’re going to regret that.”

“Shut up,” Maria tells her, “Or I’ll eat your cinnamon roll. Honestly, I’ve eaten a tray of six in one sitting. They’re _amazing.”_

They are, Natasha admits, pretty good.


End file.
